The Emerald City of Oz has always been one of my favorite of the Oz books, and perhaps that’s because it comes after two of the books in the series I found most disappointing. You can find a very thoughtful take on this book at Entering the Enchanted Castle.
Baum seems to regain some of his strength as a fantasy writer by returning to the plotline of Ozma of Oz, in which our heroes and heroines first battle the Nome King. In this story, the Nome King is out for revenge because despite all his wealth and tyranny, he misses his Magic Belt and is still seething about having been outwitted by a handful of eggs. He questions his advisors, throwing them away until he finds one who has an idea of how to conquer Oz. General Guph’s plan is simple: they’ll partner with beings who are even more evil and powerful and let them do the hard work of conquering.
While this is happening, Dorothy discovers her aunt and uncle are about to lose their farm in Kansas. Ozma proposes moving them all to live in her palace, and the only problem is that Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are not used to living the life of royalty. Dorothy tries to explain this to Ozma and is pooh-poohed. I found Ozma strangely insensitive in her treatment of Em and Henry. Her insistence on them living in the palace feels oddly inconsistent with Baum’s rhetoric about everyone in Oz being able to live a life where they feel productive and content. If the Scarecrow can live in a gilded corn cob, and Jack can live on a pumpkin farm, why shouldn’t Em and Henry have a place that makes them feel comfortable? I also thought the way Ozma insists on bringing them over is pretty horrible.
Dorothy and her friends decide to take her aunt and uncle on a tour of Oz, which is Baum’s way of letting his readers explore strange nooks and crannies of Oz, while Baum seems to revel in making puns and poking fun at human foibles. I enjoyed this because many of the strange peoples resonated with me. I often find myself worrying about things that haven’t yet happened, and when I do I remind myself of the Flutterbudgets, like the woman who is worried that she might throw her baby out the window, which then might roll down the hill and then if there were tigers at the base of the hill they might eat her baby. And in seeing the extreme wealth and power disparities that surround us, I’m also often reminded of the ridiculous King of Bunnybury, who bemoans his life of luxury and then isn’t willing to give up any of the benefits.
A theme that Baum revisits often is the idea that leadership is a responsibility, not just a privilege. In the Oz books, Baum contrasts what he sees as strong leadership – in Ozma, who defends and cares for her people – versus poor leadership. This is particularly true of the sad King of Bunnybury. While he’s not evil, Dorothy makes clear to him that being a king means taking responsibility for his people, not crying about leadership’s burdens.
Dorothy and her party are occasionally insensitive to the needs of the people they meet, like the Cuttenclips (living paper dolls who can be injured by a sneeze) and the living edibles of Bunbury (Dorothy, Toto, and Billina’s behavior towards these folks is atrocious). Still, Baum’s larger message is that very different kinds of people all have to learn to accept each other and get along, even when it’s not easy (such as when one is hungry in a town full of baked goods).
As a child I found the Nome King quite scary, and in this book Baum explores even darker creatures. However, he doesn’t spend a lot of time with them so their evilness is fairly abstract. While we are told they can easily enslave all the people of Oz, I don’t think I ever believed for a minute that would happen. I do like the way Baum builds tension throughout this book, introducing stronger and stronger villains and then making it clear they are all going to turn on Oz and each other. Ozma learns about the threat gradually, as do her companions, which is also a good tension-building device.
Ozma decides she will not fight to save Oz. Baum frequently has his characters take hard-line moral stances (another, even more difficult moral decision will be seen in the next book). While I found her lack of planning frustrating, I loved the final resolution to the conflict, which itself raised interesting morality issues. We are left to wonder, does evil reside inherently in a person or is it shaped by their memories and knowledge? Baum proposes that a person who loses memory and knowledge would become innocent as a baby, though that isn’t at all how we think about the brain today.
As I noted in my earlier post, this book is full of some of the most wondrous illustrations John R. Neill did for the Oz series, and a special series of color plates was designed with green and gold glitter. The complexity of these illustrations is pretty amazing – they not only provide vivid illustrations of the many fantastic characters in this book, but they are also bordered with whimsical designs and text from the story Each time I look at them I see something new.
I hope you’re enjoying following along with our Oz journey. The next book (and yes, there is a next Oz book, despite Baum’s attempt to cut off contact with Oz) contains one of my favorite characters in the whole series, the Patchwork Girl. While many of Baum’s female characters are sweet and beautiful, the Patchwork Girl is everything but.
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